A cream moray patterned with two rows of black star-shaped blotches and a scatter of yellow flecks, up to 1 m (3 ft), in the shallowest reef where nothing large should fit. It is common on rubble flats and in the first two meters of water, which is where most people meet it.
The teeth are the difference. The fish-eating morays carry backward-curved needles for gripping something that struggles; this one has blunt, pebble-like molars, because it eats crabs and shrimps and its problem is armor rather than escape. It crushes rather than holds.
That diet changes the animal. It hunts by smell rather than ambush, pushing into holes and cracks after crustaceans, and it will come out onto open rubble in shallow water at night to do it - behavior a fish-hunting moray cannot afford.
It is placid enough to be a standard aquarium species and still a moray: the bite is a crushing one, it does not let go quickly, and the mouth is full of bacteria. Watching one hunt a reef flat with a torch is the point; putting a hand near it is not.
The genus.Echidna Forster 1788 - échidna (vi). ETYFish
How to recognise it
cream body with two rows of black star-shaped blotches, yellow flecks between them
short blunt snout with a rounded jaw, not the long grip of the fish-eating morays
often out hunting on shallow reef flats after dark
length up to 1 m
Why it's threatened
This species appears very frequently in the aquarium trade and can be purchased from as little as $20 to more than $150. In 2001 over 2200 specimens were exported from the Philippines alone, and this number has only increased over the past decade (Lieske et al. 1994). However, collection for the aquarium trade is not believed to be a major threat (Castle 1984, Miyasaka 1993).
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
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